


Inertia Pulls

by melissfiction



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gravity Falls AU, M/M, grunkle fiddleford, inertia pulls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melissfiction/pseuds/melissfiction
Summary: Dipper and Mabel Pines are sent to 618 Gopher Road, Gravity Falls to spend the summer with their Great Uncle Stanley, only to discover that Stanley is dead, survived by his computer genius husband, the CEO of the Computermajig Cabin, Fiddleford Hadron Pines-McGucket.
Relationships: Fiddleford H. McGucket/Stan Pines
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Inertia Pulls

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a loooooooong time ago but I think it's time to post it. It's a fun little AU! Kinda spicy. I hope you enjoy <3

It was raining cats and dogs when Dipper and Mabel were finally able to stretch their stiff limbs outside the bus. Dipper, ever the over-prepared survivalist, had a large black umbrella ready for both of them to huddle under while they hopped over puddles to find the house at 618 Gopher Road, Gravity Falls, Oregon. Mabel, ever the fashionista, was already wearing her favorite shooting star sweater which, by some turn of fate, happened to be appropriate for the weather. The first ten minutes outside the bus seemed to assure the twins that they would be able to handle whatever the summer threw at them. 

Ten more minutes later, second doubts began to bloom. There were no signs, they had no map, and all the trees looked the same. Passing strangers directed them only deeper into the woods, where it became less and less likely anybody would hear their screams. Dipper had no clue what their parents were thinking when they wanted them to get “fresh air.” The most the twins had so far was fresh mud. 

“Does Stan even exist?” he questioned skeptically. His grip on Mabel’s hand was tighter than usual. 

“You think our parents would ship us off to an uncle that doesn’t exist?” she scoffed. 

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking!” He cringed at a wriggling worm his sister accidentally squished to death. Too many Goosebump books warned him about the dangers of messing with worms. They might seek revenge, then the next thing he knew, Mabel would be dragged underground by a giant worm. “None of our relatives have ever mentioned him before and we didn’t even know he existed until Mom and Dad decided to send us over to him.” 

Mabel wiped the worm guts off her shoe on grass. “Maybe they talk about him when you’re not listening,” she suggested. 

Dipper highly doubted that. Something about the name “Stan Pines” was vaguely familiar to him, for some reason, like a rhyme from an old nursery song he didn’t know the lyrics to anymore. He told himself it was a false memory concocted by hours of overthinking on the bus when he had nothing better to do. He knew nothing else about Stan other than his name and the fact that he was their so-called great uncle; it was impossible for Dipper to have anything else to remember about their unknown relative

He looked up at the sky. Visible or not, the sun would be setting soon and the rain only seemed to pour harder the longer they wandered about in the middle of nowhere. They both started walking faster. 

“What kind of a guy do you think Great Uncle Stan is?” Mabel wondered. They needed something to distract them from the possibility of starving to death in the cold wetness. She regretted eating all their snacks on the bus ride. Luckily, they had enough imagination to last them a lifetime, albeit in different directions. 

“A criminal, probably. I mean, he lives alone in some cabin in the woods.” Dipper stared at the crumpled-up paper with the address in his hand. The address was starting to look too familiar, too, but nothing rang a bell. He could feel himself going crazier with every passing second. If only he had a phone or laptop or _any_ piece of technology that could possibly give them more information about the strange place they ended up in. A cabin at 618 Gopher Road, Gravity Falls, Oregon must be on some online map, but no, all modern technology just had to be confiscated because technology made their generation dependent on “instant gratification.” Meanwhile, Dipper believed a GPS would’ve been perfect right now. 

“So does that billionaire technowizard you look up to!” Mabel argued. She suddenly gasped and pointed at a light up ahead from a house with glowing letters labeling it as the Computermajig Cabin. “Look! How perfect! Maybe we can get directions there!” She ran towards the destination with reckless abandon, no longer caring about the rain when a warm computer store was right before them. 

Dipper took a closer look at the address. “Uhh, Mabel…” She was right; that billionaire technowizard _did_ live alone in a cabin in the woods. In Oregon. Gravity Falls, Oregon. _618 Gopher Road, Gravity Falls, Oregon_ . “Do you happen to know our uncle’s _full name?_ ” 

“That’s totally insignificant, dummy! C’mon!” 

* * *

The shop was both cozy and anachronistically modern, fully living up to both parts of its name. There were no customers perusing the store. No customers were willing to trudge through the mud like the kids had for the sake of a repair or purchase. A teenage redhead employee tipped her chair back and forth while she blasted music on one of the store’s music players, tossing and catching a crumpled piece of paper she threw into the air. Wendy was sick of dressing professionally for work, evident by her messy bun and the stiletto heels tossed off to the side. She was the only one on the clock, not that there were all that many employees in the store in the first place. 

There were, in fact, only three employees at this particular Computermajig Cabin: the founder of Computermajigs himself, her, and the repair guy. Officially, she was just another tech employee (the only one at this Cabin, but nothing special nonetheless). In reality, she was really more of a cashier because any real questions or issues customers had were either directed straight to a manual online or the founder himself. Her real work was welcoming customers, giving sass for dumb questions, and collecting the money. 

That wasn’t to say nobody wanted to work at that particular Cabin. It was quite the opposite—thousands of applicants emailed résumés every day, only to be rejected on the spot by a bot with a pre-programmed message explaining that that Cabin wasn’t hiring, but there were plenty of other Cabins and options to look into. A thousand more marched into the Cabin with fierce determination and Ivy League college degrees, only to be looked up and down and turned away. 

The redhead wasn’t sure how she, of all people, got hired. Her application started off as a joke. Her desperateness to get a job to avoid being sent off to her cousin’s nightmare logging camp was the running gag of her group of friends. One afternoon, she declared with exaggerated exasperation that she might as well apply for the cruel Computermajig Cabin at this point, since every other place she could think of had turned her down. They dared her to do it and she did it because she was _that_ desperate. She waltzed in, straight-up asked for a job from the flippin’ founder of Computermajigs himself, and was hired on the spot. 

It must have had something to do with being Manly Dan’s daughter, because that’s the only thing he asked about before giving her the job and a pile of contracts to sign, though she couldn’t imagine what about being a Corduroy was relevant to computers. She was adept enough to answer most of the questions thrown at her, especially since all she had to do was look up the answer online, but to this day, she had no clue what the founder’s employee requirements were. 

The repair guy Soos was the exact opposite of her: loyal, hard-working, eager to listen to whatever the founder went off on a lecture about, worked under the founder for ten years, and endlessly generous. He was the founder’s right-hand man and prime candidate for inheriting the company. Sure, she was on close terms with their boss—referred to him as her Old Man, gossipped with him, joked around with him—and received all the same benefits and salary—which she really did _not_ deserve, not that she was complaining—but there was no one else who knew as many secrets as the repair guy. One may brush him off as a lovable man-child, but he knew more about their boss than anybody else in the world did, even if he tended to forget most of it.

Her boss wasn’t the only one with secrets, though. 

As soon as the little girl in the pink shooting star sweater burst through the doors, the music was shut off. She struggled to stuff her feet back into her stilettos. The little girl’s brother rushed to catch up to her, pausing to close his umbrella and lean it against the wall outside, before wiping his shoes on the welcome mat and sheepishly approaching Wendy with his hands shoved in his pockets. 

“H-Hey, so, um…” He cleared his throat as soon as his voice cracked. His face heated up with embarrassment. “My sister and I are looking for our Great Uncle Stan and the address our parents told us to go to happened to be here, of all places…” 

After looking around at the technological wonders around her, Mabel rushed to her brother’s side. “Yeah! Do you happen to know him?” 

Wendy fixed her hair in the reflection of a laptop on sleep mode. She figured she would get less of an earful if she stuck to the dress code, for once. “Great Uncle Stan?” she echoed. Confusion was evident in her knitted eyebrows. “Don’t you mean your Great Uncle… Well, either way, I’m totally fired!” 

Dipper wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Um, I’m sorry to hear that? But, seriously, I think we’re lost.” 

Wendy took a deep breath. “ _Old Man!_ ” she hollered. _“You’ve got some visiting family!_ ” 

It took three seconds flat for the founder of the company to shoot into the room. “Tate?” He wore rubber gloves and a white lab coat, as if he had been working on an experiment only a moment ago. Panicked eyes scanned the room wildly, but the only people he saw were Wendy and the twins. He sighed. “Don’t you get my goat like that, Ms. Corduroy, and for _heck’s sake_ , do something about your hair!” he scolded. 

In one fluid motion of defiance, Wendy ripped off her hair tie and let her hair flow past her shoulders, as she believed it was meant to. She kept a customer-friendly smile up the entire time. “Great Uncle Ford, meet Dipper and Mabel _Pines!_ ” she declared. 

His gut immediately dropped as soon as he heard that dreaded last name escape his employee’s lips. He studied the two kids before him, gazed at them in pure stupor, before slowly stepping towards the door to dial in the set of numbers on the panel next to it that turned off the light-up sign on the roof proclaiming the name of the store. After it beeped thrice, he led Wendy to her seat behind the counter, sat her down, and set a hand on her shoulder. He wore a familiar mask of cool graveness. “I’m sorry to inform you, Ms. Corduroy, but times are tough and we’ve been forced to make huge cuts because of the economy, so I’m gonna have to let you—”

“ _Oh my gosh,_ Old Man, you can’t just turn them away. You love kids!” 

“Kids are terrible.” 

“You have a son.” 

“ _Exactly_ ,” he deadpanned. He glanced over his shoulder at the kids watching him with worry. Twins. _Twins!_ Of course they had to be twins. The Pines family must carry some gene that made the phenomenon inevitably occur every few generations. He couldn’t believe himself for being blindsided by the birth of another set of Pines twins. Natural selection wasn’t supposed to condone such a disaster. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Whose grandkids are they?” 

Wendy struggled to remember. “Shermy?”

He snapped his fingers. “Shermy! Of course!” He always forgot about Shermy. Where was that guy, anyway? 

In the background, Dipper was hyperventilating. Mabel kept an arm around Dipper to steady him.

“W-We’re related to _you?_ Ford McGucket, founder, CEO, and chairman of Computermajigs Incorporated? Genius _billionaire_ Ford McGucket? But… But how? We were supposed to be sent to our Great Uncle Stan! Why does nobody in our family, why has nobody, why...” 

“Ford” glared at his employee, who chuckled nervously. She was _so_ fired. It seemed that he was covering scandals left and right, nowadays, which also reminded him of the strange rumor about him and that raccoon. “Stanley Pines, correct?” 

Mabel answered instead of Dipper while he continued to hyperventilate. “Yup!” she said brightly. “Where is he, anyway?” 

Wendy’s laughter only grew louder and more nervous. She picked up a magazine on the counter called _Avoiding People Monthly._ “Oh, wow, that’s a good issue!” She took that moment to disappear into the “Employees Only” room. 

Ford could feel a headache coming on. “Lemme tell you kids a story.” 

* * *

Fiddleford hated lying, he _really_ did. He would rather wave his hand dismissively and say “never mind all that” than commit to another lie. He never meant to take over the identity of his former research partner. Fiddleford McGucket had his own life before Stanford whisked him away to the fairytale monster hell of Gravity Falls and had intended to return to it when he quit being Stanford’s assistant. His memory erasing gun would have fixed everything, would have left him none the wiser of the town’s supernatural forces and sane enough to be the loving husband and father his family needed.

He didn’t quit, all because of a dumb savior complex begging him to rescue his Princess Unattainabelle from the likes of evil wizard Bill Cipher. The “beast with one eye” he babbled about after accidentally dipping his head into the portal was, beyond reasonable doubt, the same triangle demon Stanford had goshdarned hidden shrines of in the basement. He kept his memory erasing gun locked away in his desk, set to “Stanford Pines” until the destined day. 

Fiddleford had less than zero plans in mind to break the unknown contract Stanford had with Bill until he passed by a window display showing a television commercial for the Sham Total, a total sham. He did a doubletake—this stranger with a thick Jersey accent resembled Stanford as well as the Shapeshifter with the same nose, same build, same facial structure, but had enough differences that convinced Fiddleford that Stanford didn’t just take a few odd jobs to raise money for his research. 

Fiddleford forged Stanford’s handwriting, an extremely easy task with the myriad of samples he had from Stanford’s fondness of documentation, and faked a sincere note on the back of a postcard that explained why Stanford suddenly longed for his long-lost estranged twin brother and needed his help despite the fact that he already had the assistance of a handsome, young up-and-coming inventor. This wouldn’t be the last time Fiddleford posed as Stanford Pines.

When he came trudging through the thick winter snow, Fiddleford knew Stanley Pines was the right man for the job. Stanley’s quick wit, slick lies, and relatable anecdotes coupled with a thirst for money put Fiddleford a head up over Bill. Stanford was a paranoid mess after Bill’s betrayal and he starting to doubt his friendship with his loyal assistant. He had nobody to turn to, nobody to turn to except his own brother. Fiddleford reasoned if he was naive enough to trust a smooth-talking triangle, he was also naive enough to fall for a plot involving the conman of a brother he hasn’t been in touch with for years. 

Stanley took the money offered to him, of course—even haggled for a higher price Fiddleford reluctantly agreed to—but he wouldn’t hear of any schemes. For once, he wanted to play it clean and settle his issues with his twin fair and square. A sentimental man, Fiddleford relented his malicious intents and abandoned the little voice screaming at him to stay in control of the plan. Though, he warned Stanley that it was more likely that they would get into a fistfight that would widen the miles between them even more. 

They got into a fistfight that widened the miles between them even more. Fiddleford hadn’t accounted for their undeniable similarities, one of which included not heeding caution, like how he told Stanford to not delve too deep into otherworldly mischief that would result in the apocalypse.

Fiddleford arrived during the aftermath to fetch his memory erasing gun from his desk drawer. ( _“Stanford… Where’s your brother?” The familiar uneasiness of the portal’s background humming was dead.)_ Stanford’s eyes widened and recognized the contraption immediately. ( _“You want to leave me too, Fiddleford? You too?”)_ He was privy to the secret blueprints his assistant had been concocting since the first incident with the portal. He gave his assistant the most heartbreaking, cynical smile through his weeping. (“ _Do you really have to go to such great lengths to forget?_ ”)

Fiddleford had a comfortable life in his garage in Palo Alto, California. He had a wife and kid he was forced to neglect thanks to the unforgiving nature of their work. He wanted to have a normal life, still does. “Yes, Ford. I do.” A night doesn’t pass by without nightmares, he can’t stay still without screaming, his reflection seems to grin wickedly at him every time he passes by—God, yes, he _does_ need to forget. He needs it like Stanley needed money and Stanford needed a friend. 

During the struggle over the gun, Fiddleford accidentally pulled the trigger. This was able to hold back Stanford long enough until Fiddleford could find a blunt object and knock his former partner unconscious. In the eye of the storm, with nothing to listen to except his racing heartbeat and ragged breath, he realized that the gun was still set to “Stanford Pines.” 

In the long run, Fiddleford wasn’t sure if erasing Stanford’s mind was for the better or worse, but at the very least, he was able to live the mostly-normal life he had longed for. Coping with his mistakes was hard: Stanley was still wandering multiple dimensions, Stanford was Bill’s puppet and used his body to found a cult with himself as their god, and he couldn’t let himself forget anything until Bill was fully taken care of. However, there was always a bright side: he achieved his greatest dream of being the founder of the world’s largest PC software company and there was currently no risk of the portal causing a dimensional rift unless somehow the three journals logging the instructions to re-building the portal were found and figured out. 

And all that was only the beginning. 

* * *

Fiddleford heated three mugs of hot chocolate for the little bundles of _heckin’ sunshine_ he would have to take care of until the storm let up and he could buy them a bus ticket back home plus his idiot employee who was still feigning interest in her magazine. For himself, a nice cold glass of water and two painkillers. “Dipper, Mabel… People ask me all the time, ‘Why did you name the search engine Haggle? It had a cheap kind of connotation behind it before.’ I usually change the subject, but you youngsters deserve to know the truth.” _Or at least a part of it._ He downed his pills and entire glass of water in one go.

Dipper took notes in a mini notepad while Mabel excitedly swung her feet under her chair. Energy practically radiated off of them. Fiddleford thought of kids like sugar rushes—bouncing off the walls one minute, then crashed the next. Grown-ups did the same thing, but with coffee. Yes, he was referring to Theodore Roosevelt. What an oddball president he was. 

He chose his phrasings carefully. “I was walking down the street when I saw a guy who looked familiar. He was exactly what I needed for a certain job, so I hired him. It was a job I was desperate to get done, so I paid him a lot—”

Wendy choked on her beverage. “ _Woah_ , are you sure there isn’t _another_ talk you wanna have with Dipper and Mabel before you tell them that kind of story?” 

“ _Get your mind out of the gutter, Ms. Corduroy._ As I was saying, I paid him a lot, but it was a big job—” 

Wendy snorted. 

“—it was an _important task_ , so he haggled more out of me…” 

Dipper was on the edge of his seat. Fiddleford could almost see the millions of question marks floating above his head, asking what was so significant about that guy that motivated Fiddleford to name the famous search engine after something he did when they first met, what the task was in the first place, how much he haggled out of Fiddleford, who the guy was. The inventor purposely avoided any eye contact. 

“ _Thenwefellinlovegotmarriedandhediedinafierycarcrash._ The end! Time for bed!” 

The kids didn’t quite catch that last part, but Wendy was able to put one and one together. “Wait, was that the story about how you and Stanley fell in love at first sight?” 

Dipper gasped. He flipped to a new page in his notepad to sketch a family tree. If their grandpa Shermy and Stanley were brothers and Ford fell in love with Stanley and Ford was considered their great uncle, too, then that meant that Stanley was the mysterious late husband of Ford that nobody knew about, which also explained why nobody in their family talked about Stan. With those answers, a thousand more popped into his mind. 

His sister held similar sentiments. She _loved_ love! “What was Stan like?” 

Fiddleford scratched the back of his head nervously. “He was…” A marathon of cheesy infomercials went off in his mind. _Sham Total! It’s a total sham. Stan-Vac! It sucks more than anything. The rip-off! It won’t give you rashes, I repeat, it won’t give you rashes._ On second thought, they deserved to not know too much. “... a really bad driver.”

She cringed. “... Oh.” 

Fiddleford nodded. He didn’t want to think about the number of faked documents he had: fake marriage license, fake death certificate, fake ID and fake passport to travel to Columbia and take care of old business with Rico once and for all… Not to mention Stan’s criminal record, which he went to great lengths to censor. Honestly, he spent more time clearing Stan’s name than he actually spent with him. It was all part of his master plan to legally own the house while he cleaned up the mess of science Stanford left behind when he formed his stupid triangle cult. Plus, there was still some money left in Stanford’s research grant and Fiddleford needed something to keep him on his feet after his ex-wife left him and Tate stopped talking to him. “If you really want to know, my full name is Fiddleford Hadron Pines-McGucket, but I go by Ford McGucket. It’s not fun having your own name remind you of someone long gone.” Or more specifically, two someones long gone. 

Now Dipper knew why their parents would send them to a Stan Pines when Stanley Pines was… not with them anymore. One more major issue was still bothering him, though. “How come nobody told us we were related to you, Great Uncle Ford?” 

“Because I’m not,” Fiddleford snapped. He rubbed his temples. He had been looking forward to a day with no customers and more free time to work on miscellaneous projects he had lying around, but his mistakes always caught up to him when he least expected it. It was the ordeal with Rico all over again. At least Soos wasn’t kidnapped this time. “Don’t get into a habit of calling me that. I’m neither great nor your uncle. Any connection I had with the Pines family died the same day Stan did.” 

Wendy was quick to call her boss’ bluff. “As if!” Those words were too harsh to reflect his true feelings. If there was one thing she knew about him, it was that he didn’t believe in second chances, and the twins were the perfect opportunity to remember what it was like to have a family again. “Who’s going to inherit the company when you kick the bucket, Old Man McGucket?” It was clear that Tate preferred fish over technology, much to his father’s chagrin. 

Fiddleford rolled his eyes at the rhyme. “Way to shove high expectations upon two twelve-year-olds.” She did have a point, but he wasn’t stupid enough to entrust his fortune and company to a couple of grand niblings he didn’t even know existed until a few moments ago. He patted the twins on the shoulder. “I’ll pay for your college tuition if you go home.” 

Mabel threw her arms into the air with a victorious cheer. “Rich relatives are awesome!” She hopped off her chair and was ready to bolt out the door as fast as she bolted in, but Dipper tugged her back to her chair before she was able to contemplate her intended major. 

Perhaps their parents were right in their spiel about “instant gratification.” Good things came to those who waited, after all. They were basically choosing between a twelve-hour bus ride home for about $60,000 or thirty-odd more years for billions. (That is, if their dear Great Uncle Ford didn’t happen to suddenly die due to mysterious circumstances…) “Great Uncle F—um— _Grunkle_ Ford, I wouldn’t mind becoming your apprentice!” 

Fiddleford burst into laughter. He could see a bit of Stan in the both of them, even if they never met him before. “Haggling for a better price... Just like Stanley, huh? Well, lucky for you, I happened to like him quite a bit, so how about this: plane ride home, first class?” 

It was then that Mabel learned the beauty of haggling. She smirked at her brother. “Hmm, I think you’re right, Dipper! You’ve always been a scholar...” 

Fiddleford's laughter quickly went dry. “ _Just like him_.” He could still remember the pain of handing Stan his entire wallet. It hurt even more knowing that his money had basically been flushed down an interdimensional toilet. “I’ll throw in two phones, for communication. We’ll keep in touch.” 

Dipper was oblivious to the game he unknowingly started. “No, seriously! It would be an honor!” 

“First class plane ride, two phones, _and_ $50 each. For meals and souvenirs.” 

Wendy threw an arm around Mabel. That clever little girl wasn’t the only one who liked wringing benefits out of the old man. “Aw, but I’ve never had a little sister before!” 

Fiddleford glared at Wendy. “You’re fired, Ms. Corduroy.” 

Wendy threw an arm around Dipper, too. “They can even stay at my place!” she offered. 

He flushed at the prospect of living with the older girl for an entire summer. Regardless, he stood his ground. “Seriously, Grunkle Ford, I’d kill for another opportunity like this.” _Literally_. “I don’t know much about you and Stan, but I can tell that you two really loved each other and I don’t think he would want you to die alone with no family.” 

Fiddleford listened to the wind howling so loud outside it sounded as if it were in pain. Guilt was eating him up. Identity theft was one thing, but he couldn’t bring himself to steal another man’s family. “Boy…” The worst part was that _nobody_ loved him and he _would_ die alone with no family, but that was how he preferred it. He fished his wallet out of his pocket and slapped it onto the table, an action that brought him back to his first meeting with Stan at Greasy’s Diner. “ _... shut up and take my money._ ” 

* * *

Dinner was awkward and it was only made worse when both of Fiddleford’s employees somehow managed to invite themselves to the table. Soos was the one who brought the dinner—”Some dude ahead of me accidentally bought thirty pizzas instead of seventeen so the manager gave me two free pizzas to make up for the long wait time, dawg”—and Wendy just loved pepperoni pizza. It took three slices for Soos to finally notice that there were two extra guests at the table. 

“Dude, those aren’t _your_ grandkids, right?” he asked skeptically. That would mean Tate was a teenage father. He didn’t recall ever seeing the kids before or hearing about them in the news, but then again, he did recall his boss’ peculiar talent at hiding. It came in handy during the incident with Rico. 

Fiddleford withheld the anxious screaming inside of him that wanted to reply, _Thank the heavens they’re not!_ He didn’t want them to think that he hated the kids; he only wanted to be rid of them as soon as possible. It was safer that way. He couldn’t tell them why. The girl was clearly bright enough to look out for herself and her brother, but the boy couldn’t seem to take a hint. “They’re my heir apparents,” he replied flatly. 

Soos dropped his pizza slice. It would’ve been more dramatic if he had dropped silverware or perhaps something more fragile instead, but that wasn’t the point. He took a closer look at the kids. Two twelve-year-olds, opposite-gender versions of each other, had swooped in and stolen the title of “heir” out of the blue the _one_ day he was off in ten years. It felt like Wendy’s hiring all over again, except then, at least Soos knew she wasn’t serious when she threatened to steal Employee Of The Month from him. “They’re… Stan’s grandkids?” he assumed. He knew that his boss had a soft spot for anything that reminded him of his late husband. 

“Stan’s brother’s grandkids, actually.” Fiddleford was too exhausted to explain that Stan’s grandkids would still be his grandkids, too. 

They could’ve been Stan’s brother’s cousin’s aunt’s cousin’s grandkids twice removed for all Soos cared. It was definitely Wendy’s hiring all over again. Wendy was the daughter of the man that built the Cabin for their boss _and Stan_. As long as his late husband was in the mix, their boss felt subconsciously obligated to give all he had. She always thought of her job as a miracle, but Soos’ hiring was the real miracle. Soos was hired out of pity. Wendy and the kids had connections and all this time, Soos had thought he had a connection with his boss, too… 

Soos tried to keep the hurt out of his tone. “So, uh, they’re the heirs since they’re family?” 

Fiddleford shrugged. He was considering the idea, as opposed to it as he was. “Tate certainly ain’t claiming the title any time soon.” 

“Oh... “ 

“Something wrong? Speak up now, or forever hold your peace.” 

“I was just thinking that… I thought _we_ were family, too.” 

The magazine Wendy was reading earlier suddenly caught Fiddleford’s attention. He picked it up and flipped back and forth through it with wonder. “Huh! This is the June issue, isn’t it?” With that, he walked out of the room, clearly too invested in the magazine to continue the conversation. 

* * *

Wendy escorted the twins to the room in the attic she secretly prepared for the twins. It was supposed to be for Tate if he ever decided to stay the night, which was purely wishful thinking. There was only a single bed in the very middle of the room and boxes of computer parts pushed to one side of the room. Wendy was under the impression that as soon as her boss fell in love with his grand-niblings, he would spoil them immediately. 

Dipper and Mabel schlepped their luggage up the stairs behind her. Dipper hooked his elbow into Mabel’s for emotional support. He was guessing that she was as unsettled about the entire arrangement as he was. It was _kind of_ a big deal to become the heir of the most successful computer company in the world overnight. Maybe a little bit. “So, uh, Ms. Corduroy?” 

“Dude, just call me Wendy. All that formal junk is just because of Old Man McGucket’s weird Southern manners.” She opened the door for them and let them settle into their humble room. She was a little creeped out by how synchronized the twins were as they dumped their luggage on opposite sides of the single bed and hopped on the edge of it at the same time. 

Mabel, however, shoved her shoes off and collapsed onto the bed as soon as possible. Dipper stayed seated where he was, taking in as much of the room as he could. His eyes were glued to the triangular window above them. “So, you’re the one that helped convince our parents to send us here?” he asked. 

“Yup!” she proudly confessed. She opened up the closet. “By the way, I’m gonna change. Don’t mind me.” She kept a few emergency outfits there for convenience: just her everyday outfit and work outfit. She hated how restricting her work uniform was. Every other Computermajig Cabin in the world had a simple white polo and khakis for their employees, but the original Computermajig Cabin just had to be the only exception because of how concerned her boss was with appearances. She didn’t care what she looked like when she was interviewed on the clock. It was easier to kick a guy’s butt in boots and jeans than a pencil skirt and heels, not that she couldn’t do both. The routine was so second-nature to her that it only took a few minutes of disappearing into the closet before she emerged with a green plaid flannel, jeans, boots, and her trusty lumberjack hat. 

Dipper wasn’t thinking about what Wendy’s bra looked like in those few minutes. Not at all. “How come our family didn’t know that Stan was gone? And how come they also didn’t know that we were related to Fiddleford McGucket? Why does it feel like the Pines family has been hidden away from the view of the public?” 

Mabel suddenly sat up. “Ditto! Dipper knows _everything_ there is to know about Fiddleford McGucket, except for his tragic past with his husband!” 

Wendy had to agree with them; it _was_ pretty suspicious how little anyone knew about Stan Pines. “That’s why I brought you two here. Yeah, he’s a grumpy old traditional coot that dedicates his life to his work, but the Old Man is just lonely, I swear. His first wife left him, his first husband died, and his own son doesn’t even want to talk to him. I just…” She sighed and let her bangs fall over her eye. “I just wanted to make him happy… or something.” 

“Or something?” Mabel repeated. 

“Or something,” Wendy confirmed. 

* * *

On the darkest hour before sunrise, Fiddleford dialed his son’s number, knowing that Tate would be awake but not awake enough to think to deny whoever was calling him at such an early hour. He wandered around the house while he anxiously waited for the fourth ring. Tate always picked up at the fourth ring. He also always hung up whenever his father tried to politely greet him with a “good morning” or “how are you,” so this time, Fiddleford cut to the chase. 

“Son, are you _sure_ you don’t want my company and billions of dollars when I die?” 

“Yes.” 

The call ended right then and there. Tate was a man a few words. Fiddleford admired that about his son—that brusque, succinct nature of his that pierced through his father like a kitchen knife into some poor, unsuspecting sap in a horror movie. Life would’ve been a lot easier if Tate would say yes to the fortune, but no, there was a heated war over who would inherit Computermajigs Incorporated now and Fiddleford had to pacify it. A potential sibling feud was bad enough as it was, but add in a third guy, and it was a loop back to the past. 

He picked up a picture frame in the living room. The photograph was the only one he had of Stanley. Wendy forced him to keep it around when she found it hidden away in storage. It was them at Greasy’s Diner, with Stanley giving bedroom eyes to the camera while he had his arm around Fiddleford. The other arm was outstretched to take the picture. Fiddleford hated it. The picture was too ominous, too foreshadowing. They were in the middle of talking about the Computermajig business, which was a mere idea at the time, when Stanley suddenly took a Polaroid camera out of his jacket pocket and asked for a picture. It was something to remember him by, he said. As soon as the ink set, he signed the back in crooked all-caps, distinctly different from Stanford’s neat cursive. _To the guy who will change the world._ No signature. He intended for the photograph to be esoteric.

He took the picture into the kitchen, set it down in the middle of the table like a centerpiece, and sat down with it. “You were right, Stanley. I changed the world,” he admitted, mostly to himself. He wouldn’t actually speak to Stanley like that. He would’ve hidden behind pretenses of sarcasm and wit because it seemed like the right approach to take with a con man that acted like a business partner. Nevertheless, Stanley would’ve been proud of him. 

He studied Stanley’s self-assured smirk in the photo. “Unfortunately, your brother did, too.” 

* * *

Work the next day was the same as last night. It wasn’t even nine and the wind was howling like it was seeking revenge on the trees. Fiddleford was grateful for the series of thunderstorms plaguing the town at this time. It kept the store empty and the kids inside. They were easy enough to sate, being California city-slickers that grew up with his technology in their chubby little baby hands. As much as Fiddleford wanted to close the store for the day, he didn’t want his employees out in the pouring rain until the storm let up. Thus, they were all happily stranded with the fastest Wi-Fi in the world. 

Fiddleford was thinking about expanding his company into the kitchen appliance market (coffee-makers, namely) when he noticed Soos fervently typing. He was frustrated by the error sound notification that followed every time he entered his system command in. “Uh, Mr. McGucket? Don’t be alarmed, but I think one of your computers has a virus.” 

Fiddleford rushed over to see the problem. He highly doubted malware was the case. He _invented_ malware, albeit, accidentally. His security was nearly impenetrable and even if there was the miniscule chance of a virus seeping past his defenses, he could seal up the leak in a millisecond. Bell-tone sound notifications rang one after the other as pop-ups sprang up. They weren’t regular annoying ads, though. They were system notifications scrambled all over the screen, all with one letter on them. 

h

e

l

p

m

e 

Dipper cautiously peeked at the screen. “It looks like a code. Maybe you should solve it.” 

Fiddleford glared at the screen. “If it was worth my time, maybe. This is child’s play.” He hit CTRL+ALT+F8+SHIFT+SHIFT+TAB for five seconds, then typed GOAWAY in all caps. The pop-ups immediately disappeared. Not many knew of this feature, but all computermajigs were equipped with special key commands that could conquer most common viruses in seconds. Fiddleford had a list of them in the manual that nobody read. 

He was content with his feat until the lights went out. Someone let out a high-pitched shriek. It wasn’t a power shortage, otherwise the computers would all be off. All the screens in the room glitched to a black screen with a glowing yellow single-eyed triangle in the middle. Tablets, phones, digital cameras, laptops, computers, and televisions displayed the eerie symbol. A flash of lightning illuminated the room for a brief moment, prompting more shrieks of terror. 

“To heck it goes,” Fiddleford cursed. He underestimated his dear old college buddy’s abilities. Intelligence wasn’t something that could be wiped away so easily. 

Mabel dropped the tablet she was playing on. The screen now had a huge crack across the middle of it. “That’s justified because of the situation, right?” 

Soos shook his head at her. 

She took a sharp inhale through her teeth and looked at the price tag. “ _Yikes_.” 

“Yikes, indeed,” Fiddleford agreed. He put in a series of commands to attempt to get rid of the black screen, but he was only met with an annoying notification with an even more annoying sound, mocking his failure. Finally, he managed to maneuver his way into the source code of the malware breaching the system. Of course, it was all written in cryptography, a Satanic font, and many instances of the number 666. He glared at it. “What _is_ this? ~ATH? Are we all cursed now?” 

“We’re _cursed?_ ” Soos repeated in horror. 

“I’m kidding, Mr. Ramirez. ~ATH is too advanced,” Fiddleford assured him. He didn’t doubt that _he_ was cursed. He had to be honest, though; he had never encountered this kind of language in coding before and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about it. He doubted it was as impossibly mind-boggling as ~ATH, but it was clear that they weren’t playing by the usual rules, anymore. The malware had some kind of spell embedded into it. So be it. Fiddleford could throw away the manuals, too. “I think we should resort to Plan B.” 

Wendy gladly took her pocket axe out of her purse without missing a beat. Soos picked up a baseball bat that was always behind the cash register for safety purposes. Mabel cheered and hauled a wooden chair from the kitchen. “This is _totally_ justified because of the circumstances!” 

Dipper, the voice of reason, spoke up. “Uhhh, what’s Plan B?” 

“ _This_ ,” Fiddleford answered. He high-kicked the originally infected computer, smashing a good foot-sized hole into the monitor. 

Dipper shrieked. “Y-You’re not going to try to fix it?” He felt guilty getting a scratch on his phone, and now thousands of dollars of technology was shattering before his eyes. 

Fiddleford chucked a laptop at a wall. “We can just order a new shipment.”

“Shouldn’t we try to figure out what’s wrong?” Dipper insisted. 

Oh, Fiddleford knew _exactly_ what was wrong. It was the same thing that was wrong with the entire town, the same thing that haunted him in his nightmares, and the same thing that has kept him on anxiety medication for thirty years. That virus was just a rouse to lure him into a trap. He couldn’t risk anything, especially with a pair of naive, impressionable kids around. He took Dipper by the shoulders. “Listen, boy, it’s just a hacker. I deal with terrorists and malicious competitors all the time. It’s nothing new, nothing I can’t handle. It’s just annoying, at this point. In fact, I was planning on coming out with a new line of _everything,_ anyway.”

Dipper couldn’t take his off of the screens glowing with the yellow single-eyed triangles on them, going dead black one by one as the others destroyed them. He felt like he'd seen that symbol, before. If Fiddleford really had everything under control, why destroy everything? Those letters he saw were trying to tell them something. But he couldn’t argue with a genius. Fiddleford was his idol, after all. All he could muster was a small nod. 

Fiddleford patted Dipper on the shoulder. “Now get smashing.” 

* * *

As smart as his former research partner and old college buddy was, Fiddleford excelled farther at technology than Stanford could ever hope to. Screw Stanford’s 12 Ph.Ds! The portal couldn’t have been built without Fiddleford and it certainly couldn’t be rebuilt without him. Fiddleford just needed to study up on magic again to concoct a security update that could ward off voodoo. 

There was one delay, though: due to the hazardous weather conditions, the new shipment of products wouldn’t arrive until next Monday. That meant a whole 7 days living in the Stone Age. Fiddleford had made sure everything was smashed to bits. The only piece of technology left connecting the cabin to the outside world was the landline. 

“Wait!” Wendy chimed in. “I still have my phone!” 

She held it up victoriously, like it was the cure to cancer, only for the yellow one-eyed triangle symbol to flash in place of her usual green plaid wallpaper. Soos took the liberty of snapping it in half. 

Fiddleford rubbed his chin. So the malware had been spread wirelessly for sure. With magic, anything was possible, but there were rules. He had never seen it interfere with technology in such a manner, before, unless symbols or incantations were embedded within the components from the beginning. Luckily, he had kept (and organized) Stanford’s old magic scroll and books. He had been extremely tempted to burn them, but with Bill around, Fiddleford needed as much defense as he could get. 

Wendy gave a pleading smile to her boss. “So, I get to go home early with paid leave for the next week?” 

“Don’tcha see the _mess_ you just made, Ms. Corduroy? I oughta fire you for damaging company property. Get to cleaning. Re-do your hair, while you’re at it. And Soos, watch your posture.” Fiddleford went off to the kitchen before Wendy could throw in any more objections. He needed salt, first of all, and he recalled having a spare bottle of holy water 

While Soos was fetching a broom with a straighter spine, Wendy was staring longingly at the window. She peeked through the blinds, then winced. Natural sunlight was always blinding after staying indoors all day. The heavy rain had let up as suddenly as it had came, but the lingering clouds foretold that the calm wouldn’t last long. Sparkles of water dripped from the rooftop. “There’s a rainbow,” she said. “You can’t see it from here, though.”

Mabel was quick to join her side. She doesn’t even remember the last time she saw a rainbow back home. The Pines’ family front lawn has yellowed from the new city policy dictating that the grass could only be watered three times a week because of the drought. “Can Dipper and I go out and see it?” She was about to suggest that they take a picture to show it to everyone else before she remembered that all the cameras were gone. She also wanted to look up how long a rainbow lasted after the rain ended, but there was nothing to access the internet with. There really was nothing to do in the middle of the woods besides go outside or do chores--their parents finally got their wish. 

“Shouldn’t we stay inside and help clean up?” Dipper argued. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a flash of yellow. He picked up a smartphone that somehow managed to escape with only a severely cracked screen. The eye in the middle of the yellow triangle blinked at him. He quickly stuffed the phone in his back pocket before anyone noticed. 

Wendy blew a raspberry at him. “Dude, seriously? Go out and be a kid! Splash in the puddles, kick some rocks, eat some bugs! Life isn’t all typing and screens, you know.”

Dipper didn’t realize enjoying his youth meant exposing yourself to bacteria and contracting diseases. He hated the old anti-technology rhetoric about needing to build character or whatever. The internet exposed him to _far_ more than the dirt outside ever could—point being the mysterious symbol imprinted on the screen in his back pocket. 

“You heard her, Dippin’ Dots. Let’s eat some bugs!” Mabel dragged Dipper out the door. 

“Wait, Mabel! It’s freezing outside! Let me get my jacket and rain boots and my umbrella in case it starts raining again, and shouldn’t we also tell Grunkle Ford—” 

“Adventure awaits!” Mabel exclaimed. 

It was only after the twins’ voices faded into the distance that Wendy took a good look at the wreckage around her and realized that extra hands _would_ have been appreciated in the clean up. 

* * *

“Mabel!” Dipper’s pants came out in white bursts of fog. “Mabel, you’re not even going the right direction!” The observer had to be between the sun and the rain to see the rainbow. Mabel was disappearing into the dark depths of the forest, far beyond where light could reach. Dipper could only follow the footprints she left in the mud. He was sweaty and shivering, now--his least favorite combination. It was like Oregon had said, _Summer? I don’t even know ‘er!_ He kept his eyes on the ground and his hands in his pockets as he plowed on forwards. He wasn’t even sure what direction they had come from, since Mabel had spun them around in a few circles before taking off on her own. 

He missed the California drought. He missed the Computermajig Cabin’s heater. He missed GPS. He missed being forced to stay _in_ side.

… But one thing that he finally had now was privacy. He took out the cracked smartphone from his back pocket. The triangle-eye symbol blinked at him again. The eye almost seemed… happy to be acknowledged? It was as if the screen was sentient. Haha, sentient screens—Dipper really _did_ need to get out more. Laughing nervously to himself didn’t help ease the feeling that he was being watched, though. 

He looked up. Did he see something? _Didn’t_ he see something? 

Dipper returned his attention to the screen. Holding the phone gave him some comfort. He could pretend 911 was only a call away. He helplessly tapped the screen, hoping for a reaction, but the symbol would only blink at regular intervals. “If _I_ was a hacker,” Dipper declared, “I would at least make my virus do something more interesti—” 

CLANG. 

Dipper had walked straight into a tree. He sure was glad nobody was around to witness that, and certainly nobody would believe him if he told them that he had just run into a metal tree. He brushed the moist dirt off his clothes. Ugh, yeah, that was gonna leave some stains. He picked up the phone off the ground. The collision with the metal tree had done away with the phone’s life once and for all. So much for _that_ mystery. The tree, on the other hand… 

Dipper knocked on it. _Clang clang!_ He put his hand on the cold, dusty “trunk”. That was metal, alright. As he was brushing the dust off, he felt a prominent ridge, almost like a door. The hidden compartment revealed a strange device with switches and buttons, clearly too antique to be one of his Grunkle’s creations. He couldn’t resist the urge to mess with the device and flipped the switches back and forth. 

A goat bleated behind him as another hidden compartment opened up. Dipper approached it hesitantly. “What the?” Upon closer inspection, there was a thick book buried under years of dust and cobwebs. The sudden exposure to light scurried two centipedes away. Dipper picked it up and blew the dust off. 

A gold six-fingered hand shone in the dim light. Apparently, the book was the third in its series. He turned to the first entry, from June 18th. “It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since I began studying the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon.” Other entries told of floating eyeballs, giant vampire bats, gnomes, and cursed doors. “What is all this?” These couldn’t possibly be the writings of _his_ Grunkle, the famous recluse tech wiz billionaire Ford McGucket. Whoever the author was would’ve been great friends with his Grunkle, though. They both agreed that there was _something_ in Gravity Falls to be paranoid about. “Unfortunately, my suspicions have been confirmed. I’m being watched. I must hide this book before _He_ finds it. Remember—in Gravity Falls there is no one you can trust.” 

Dipper shut the journal. _“... no one you can trust,_ ” he whispered. 

“HELLO!” Mabel screamed. 

Dipper felt like he had a heart attack, seizure, and stroke all at once. 

“What’cha reading? Some nerd thing?” 

Dipper’s first instinct was to lie. “Uhh, uhh, it’s nothing!” 

Mabel mimicked him mockingly, then laughed. “What, are you actually not going to show me?” 

Dipper felt a pang of guilt gnawing at him. He didn’t want to turn into his Grunkle. Well, the billionaire genius part yes, but the secretive part, no. “Uhh…” The goat from earlier was gnawing on the edge of the journal. “Let’s go somewhere private.” 

He was right to do so. The “dead” phone Dipper had discarded was alive, awake, and aware of their conversation. 

* * *

“You _what!_ ” Fiddleford screamed. 

“Kids need at least an hour of exercise a day, you know, and it just stopped raining, so they went to see the rainbow.” 

“What if they get lost? What if they get hurt? What if they catch a cold? What if they can’t find their way back? What if they’re _kidnapped,_ Ms. Corduroy? They could be locked in a murder basement, tortured every hour with knives and forced to eat human flesh! Oh, those poor kids! Those poor, innocent, young, naive—”

“Uh, Grunkle Ford, we’re right here.” Dipper waved sheepishly from behind the hyperventilating man. “We got back, like, an hour ago.” He didn’t want to know what kind of reaction he would get out of Fiddleford for bringing home an ancient Satanic-looking fantasy journal from a creepy part of the woods. One thing that he and Mabel were able to agree on about the journal was that what Fiddleford didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Fiddleford was on the verge of tears. “Oh, thank goodness!” No, scratch that, he was sobbing uncontrollably. He squeezed the air out of the twins’ lungs. “It’s dangerous out there, y’hear? There’s wolves and axe murderers and rabies and, ugh, _anti-vaxxers…_ I’ll never let either of you out of my sight again.” 

“... Without permission?” Mabel managed to wheeze out. 

Fiddleford squeezed tighter. “ _Never_.” 

The twins wriggled out of their Grunkle’s python-tight grip. Talk about a suffocating parent. 

“Buuuut, what if we’re not alone? Like if I was with someone really cute and sweet and dependable and nothing bad could possibly happen?” Mabel asked. 

Fiddleford remained resolute. “There’s no one in Gravity Falls you can trust.” He made a point to glance at Wendy immediately afterwards. She rolled her eyes. 

Synapses started firing off in Dipper’s brain. _Wait a second…_

“What if I liked him?” Mabel insisted.

“No.” 

“What if _you_ liked him?” 

“I don’t like anyone.” Again, he glanced at Wendy.

“Okay, but what if—”

There was a knock on the door. 


End file.
